


Mother's Day

by BekkaPramheda



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Compliant, F/M, Family, Gen, and lots and lots of backstory, pre-relationship kabby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 10:58:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6751258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BekkaPramheda/pseuds/BekkaPramheda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aurora Blake didn’t have a terrific track record of sheltering her children to begin with. But then, Abby wasn’t sure she’d done much better.</p><p>Because I love stories about mothers, and Abby Griffin is the best kind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother's Day

**Author's Note:**

> Set just after the massacre of the Grounder army, so 3x05-3x06 probably.
> 
> Bellamy wasn't meant to be in here, he just happened.
> 
> If I got stuff wrong, corrections are more than welcome!

Abigail Griffin woke to a hand shaking her shoulder and an urgent whisper of “Abby!” with the particular intonation that she’d somehow gotten so used to that these days her name sounded odd any other way. She smiled faintly. 

“Marcus?” 

“Abby, hi.” 

He smiled back, but she could see his anxiety in the creases between his eyebrows.

“I’m sorry, Abby, there’s a Grounder woman who needs your help. I need you to come with me, quickly.” 

“In the prison bay? Marcus, you know I can’t…”

“She was. Now she’s in my quarters.” 

Her face must have betrayed her confusion because Marcus chuckled.

“Not like that, Abby! But Pike can’t find out that she’s gone, clearly.”

“Of course.” Abby dragged herself out of bed with a groan and looked around for clothes to pull on over her nightshirt, rubbing her eyes. “And a Grounder woman from the prison bay ended up in your quarters how, exactly?”

“Well, I was passing by, and they hadn’t changed the codes on the doors…”

She turned around and raised her eyebrows at Marcus, demanding the rest of the story.

“She needed medical attention, Abby. Lincoln distracted the guards and I got her out.” He smiled wryly. “And don’t give me ‘you could have gotten caught,’ Nate’s told me about the little medicine smuggling arrangement the two of you have with the prisoners.”

She shook her head, concentrating on her shoelaces to conceal her own smile. “You still could get caught, Marcus. Is my medic kit going to be enough to patch this woman up, or do I need to smuggle more?”

“She’s not injured, Abby. She’s having a child.”

“Labor?” Abby blanched. “I’m not… There are other people who could help her. Maybe you should have gotten Jackson, or…”

Marcus’ brow furrowed further. “Abby, there’s a reason you’re head doctor.”

“You said she needed my help, and she doesn’t,” she snapped. “Plenty of people could do it.”

“And how many could I trust to get up at three in the morning and help a stranger when it could cost all of us our freedom?” He brushed a few stray hairs out of her face, “I need it to be you, Abby.”

She looked back at him for a moment, then stepped away to find her kit. “Fine. I’ll do what I can, but what if a prison guard notices she’s gone?”

“I’ll do what I can too. You focus on your patient.”

“All right.” She took a deep breath. “Take me to her.”

\--

On the Ark, with such a small medical staff, it had been necessary for doctors to possess a broad range of skills, and Abby knew she had always been an exceptional doctor. She was particularly proud of how quickly she’d adapted to the role of field medic in the past few months; it was largely a lost art on the Ark, with the medical bay never more than fifteen minutes’ walk away, but she found she loved the pace and creativity that her job now required of her. Bad things happened at an alarming rate on Earth, and for the most part she genuinely believed that she was the best person to fix them. She’d hoped that that confidence would carry over to delivering children, but she still found herself paralyzed by the thought.

It had never been a problem when she was younger. Dr. Murphy had taken care of most of the deliveries because she was accustomed to doing them and the mothers trusted her more, but when the head doctor was heavily pregnant herself and needed to rest Abby had managed fine, even delivering the doctor’s little boy John with the help of a new medical student named Jackson. To be able to do such a favor for a woman who had been a friend and a mentor to her was an incredible feeling, and as she gave John to his mother for the first time she hoped it would be repaid soon.

And then, a month before Abby’s own baby was due, her placenta started coming away. She bled and bled, and without access to the drugs they would need to accelerate labor and blood rations too strict to attempt a Caesarian there was nothing to do but try to slow the bleeding and hope. 

They didn’t need to tell her what it meant. The blood loss was a serious problem, but worse than that was the possibility that the baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen. It could be seriously damaged or dying, and there was nothing to do. Through the heavy dread, Abby was furious. She had always felt that the best thing about medicine was that, no matter how bad things were, there was always something you could try to make it better. There was always a way to fight, and that made it okay that occasionally she lost. But now her baby could be dying and there wasn’t a damn thing she or Jake or even Dr. Murphy could do about it. 

In the end she got lucky, and baby Clarke was born five weeks early but alive and loud and perfect. But the next time Abby stepped into a delivery room, she was hit with a wave of terror and paralysis that was every bit as strong as it had been the day she thought she would lose her daughter.

So she stepped back and let Dr. Murphy care for that mother, and the next, and she didn’t have to think about it again until seven years later when Dr. Murphy’s husband was floated and she stopped showing up for work. The first time that a laboring woman stepped into Head Doctor Griffin’s medical bay, Jackson, being Jackson, had seen Abby’s face and taken over immediately.

She’d never told Clarke. Now that Dr. Murphy and Jake were both dead, she supposed Jackson was the only one who knew.

But she couldn’t wake Jackson up and risk him being caught too, she knew that really. Marcus and Abby had been a team from the moment he handed her the Chancellor’s pin, and there were no limits on what they would do to help each other and no guilt in asking for it. Abby loved Jackson too, dearly, but she wouldn’t let herself drag him into danger. So she was on her own.

\--

The woman, as it turned out, spoke no English, and while Marcus’ Trigedasleng had been sufficient to explain to her that it was important she stay quiet it was unlikely she would understand any guidance from Abby even if it was offered. Abby found herself mostly relieved by this. One less thing to worry about, anyway.

She’d collected bedding, a flashlight, and as much water as she thought wouldn't be missed, and found herself rearranging Marcus’ things before she realized that she’d never been in his quarters before. They were sparse, like most rooms in what was left of Alpha Station - the engineers had done an incredible job of maximizing habitable space in the Ark, much of which was totally inverted in the landing, but most of the resulting rooms were small, dark, and lent themselves even less to decoration than the original Ark interiors. The only thing distinguishing this room as Marcus’ was his books. Half a dozen were stacked on his nightstand, including - Abby noticed with a smile - a history of the French Revolution that she’d retrieved from the library at Mount Weather as a gift for him. 

Abby busied herself with arranging pillows around the woman, who Marcus had told her was named Alyse, and performing a quick exam to determine the stage of labor. She flinched when her glove came away with smears of blood on it, though she knew perfectly well that a little blood was normal. She turned her back until she was able to control her breathing, though it didn’t make her feel any more calm. 

Alyse was fully dilated, which meant that she had gotten through the most intense part of her labor alone. Abby marveled, as she did frequently these days, at the Grounders’ capacity to withstand extreme pain. It was typically an inconvenience for her, especially when it came to Grounder warriors visiting Arkadia, who frequently trained on severe injuries and wounds, coming to her only when the damage was so severe that they could barely stand. She couldn’t count the number of emergency blood transfusions and avoidable surgeries she had done in the past months. In this case, though, it was a blessing. The baby was positioned properly, the mother seemed stable, and best of all, her contractions were shallow and spaced several minutes apart. Her body was taking a break to prepare itself for the birth itself, which meant that Abby had a few moments to prepare as well.

\-- 

Marcus returned to the room ten minutes later, asking if there was anything he could do to help. He didn’t ask how she was, but she could see the concern in his eyes as he watched her pace beside his bed. She definitely couldn’t do anything with him looking at her like that, so she sent him to Medical to fetch the Ark’s old copy of Gray’s Anatomy. That would help, at least.

\-- 

Alyse’s contractions started accelerating after that, and it struck Abby that she had no idea if this woman had had a child before. If she hadn’t, Abby would certainly need to talk her through it, and that was nearly impossible with no common language. The uncertainty made it harder and harder to keep her hands steady, and when she saw another small gush of blood she couldn’t contain her growing panic any more. Her mind went blank and she pulled her gloves off and ran out of the door - and immediately collided with a guard.

Idiot, she thought, as the two of them fell to the floor. Marcus had told her last week that Pike had guards on patrol near the prison, she should have remembered. She shouldn’t have panicked in the first place. She hit the ground hard and squeezed her eyes shut, searching for an explanation that wouldn’t implicate Marcus. 

Why was she not in handcuffs yet? 

She opened her eyes slowly, and looked up into the perplexed face of Bellamy Blake. 

“Chancellor Griffin. You were in Councillor Kane’s room…?”

Abby couldn’t help laughing. “Oh god, Bellamy. Not that. I have a … patient.” 

“In Kane’s room.” He raised one eyebrow.

“It’s a long story. Laboring mother.” 

Bellamy’s face changed.

“Oh. Do you need any help?” 

Abby supposed she wouldn’t accomplish anything by refusing.

To his credit, Bellamy didn’t notice - or more likely, pretended not to notice - that the woman was a Grounder. He smiled at Alyse as he stepped into the room, and remarked, “She’s close now, isn’t she?” 

“You’ve seen this before.” Not a statement as much as an accusation.

Bellamy nodded, looking down to avoid eye contact. “And dreamed about it most every night since.”

It wasn’t a great surprise, Abby realized. Aurora Blake didn’t have a terrific track record of sheltering her children to begin with. But then, Abby wasn’t sure she’d done much better.

\--

It didn’t take Marcus long to find the anatomy textbook Abby had sent him for. She had made an old office space for herself in the very back of the new medical bay, but she did all of her administrative work in the war room It was a delicate old book, clearly predating the Ark by a number of years. It had been rebound in a piece of green cotton that was too threadbare even to be worn as clothes. The pages were very fragile too; the Ark had never been a good environment for the preservation of old books, and very few were in use any more, but this one was clearly special.

Then he pulled it off of the shelf, and a half dozen folded sheets of white paper fell out. Marcus froze and watched them fall, incredulous.

This paper had been the cause of one of his first arguments with Abby, just after she was elected to the council nine years ago. She had petitioned the council for a hundred sheets of paper for the reproduction of anatomical diagrams. It had been one of her best presentations, referencing studies done on Earth before the war about the benefit of non-digital anatomical drawing for medical students and arguing passionately that the Ark couldn’t afford to lose any information as their books slowly became unusable. 

Marcus had protested the wastefulness - paper was a very limited resource, and using digital resources wasn’t a problem for any other department - but Abby’s presentation was impeccably rehearsed and personally compelling. It was an easy sell, and he resented her for it for years. He’d never quite understood why it was so important to her. Now he could see her vision, though. The pictures were beautifully detailed, even more so than the illustrations that they were copied from. He couldn’t imagine the hours of work that must have gone into producing them.

And at the bottom, in neat cursive, they were signed “Clarke Griffin, 2142.” 

There were dozens more tucked into the book, were dated between 2140 and 2143, though the earlier ones were noticeably less precise. Many of these were drawn on half sheets of paper, and some had a diagram on either side. He couldn’t fault Abby for wastefulness. And he found he couldn’t summon any of his old anger at her either, even upon the realization that she had been appropriating Ark resources because her daughter liked to draw. It was so… Abby of her.

Now, he reflected with a small smile, wouldn’t be the best time to have this conversation. So he tucked the drawings back into the book’s pages and got up to go.

\-- 

Abby found the Blake boy surprisingly helpful. He had a good touch and followed directions well, and the familiar process of talking an apprentice (which Bellamy wasn’t, of course, but he was quick enough to manage) through a procedure calmed her a little. He didn’t seem inclined to arrest her, which was convenient, but she found that the possibility didn’t worry her much anyway. She’d been arrested for prioritizing a patient’s treatment enough times on the Ark… most recently, of course, for saving a man’s life after Bellamy had tried to kill him. How things had changed.

Alyse’s labor moved quickly from that point. Abby still felt light-headed every time she saw blood on her gloves, but with Bellamy holding Alyse’s hand and encouraging her with the handful of Trigedasleng words that Octavia had taught him, she was just about able to shut out her panic and focus on her job. 

Then the baby was born and, as newborn babies tend to do, it screamed. 

All doors from the original Ark structure had hard seals, so that in an emergency rooms could be made airtight in order to contain the damage were the hull to be breached. Abby had anticipated the baby’s cry and sealed Marcus’ so that nobody outside would hear it. She hadn’t anticipated the terror that crossed Bellamy’s face at the sound.

Abby wrapped Alyse’s new son in a blanket and gestured for Bellamy to step away. Once she was sure that both mother and baby were stable, she turned around to find Bellamy crouching on the floor with his forehead pressed to the wall. She sat down next to him. 

“Octavia?” she guessed.

He nodded.

“I couldn’t let her cry, when she was small. My mom went to work, and...” 

Abby had no response to that. Bellamy surprised her by laughing.

“Gotta say, though, it was a lot easier to keep her out of trouble then than it is now. As I’m sure you know.” 

Abby laughed too. 

“Well, you know my daughter. At least Octavia isn’t a… what’s the phrase?”

“Commander of death?”

“That’s the one.” She shook her head, exasperated. 

A few moments passed in silence, before Bellamy pushed himself back onto his feet. 

“You should go. I can get her back into the prison bay, if I’m quick. And I’ll see if I can talk Pike into releasing her tomorrow.” 

Abby gaped, confused at first and then angry. “Why would you do that for her, after you just…” She gestured in the direction of the front gate. 

Bellamy cocked his head to one side, puzzled.

“Alyse isn’t a soldier, Abby. She’s not a threat. She’s just a mother.”

Abby scoffed and made to leave, but she turned back when Bellamy called her name.

“She didn’t leave because of you. Clarke, I mean.” 

Abby’s expression softened. 

“Not you, either.” 

Bellamy shrugged noncommittally, and then she left.

\-- 

Abby wasn’t sure what time it was when she crept out of Marcus’ room and headed back to medical, but it was still dark and quiet in the old Ark corridor. She was just beginning to wonder where Marcus had gotten to when she tripped.

Because, she thought grumpily, no late-night emotionally fraught medical emergency was complete without landing on the floor at least twice.

A quiet groan from behind her alerted her to Marcus’ presence. That answers that, she thought.

He was sitting propped up against the wall, surrounded by folded pieces of white paper, with one leg extended away from him. She supposed that must have been what she tripped on. She stared at him, not quite able to formulate a question. 

“My leg” - he grimaced - “gives out when I’m up for too long.” 

Her mind jumped to the intricate repair she had had to do to allow him to keep the leg at all. Of course it would be expected to fail periodically.

“Oh, Marcus. There are some medicines we can try, to improve your circulation…”

“Abby.” He placed one hand on hers. “I’m all right. I need to rest, and then it’ll be fine.” 

She nodded, anxiously. 

“I would offer to help you to bed, but I honestly don’t know if I could make it back. I’m exhausted.”

“It’s fine, Abby. Honestly.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t mind one of those blankets you were carrying, though... “ 

As she arranged the blanket, a few of the pieces of paper flew up and landed on her lap. She frowned at them.

“What…?” 

Marcus frowned. “I dropped the book, when I fell. I’m sorry…” 

But Abby was smiling as she unfolded Clarke’s drawings. 

“Of course! The paper presentation, do you remember?” 

“I do!” Marcus chuckled. “I resented it for years. All that so that Clarke could draw some bones?” 

“God, she loved it so much. Hours and hours of work. I never understood…” 

Abby started giggling, almost hysterically. Marcus started laughing too. She leaned her head over to rest on his shoulder.

When they caught their breath, Marcus added, “The drawings are very good. Clarke is. Amazing, really.” 

She could hear the smile in his voice, and smiled back. “I know.” 

The next time she looked up, he was asleep.

\--


End file.
